Complexity

On a recent mini-episode of Radio Lab, Robert Krulwich presented a recent speech at Cal-tech. He implored the audience of future scientists to talk about science to the non-scientists in their lives. He told the story of Newton who published his most important work in the most dense, academic language possible. Newton, according to Krulwich, did this intentionally to eliminate the need to talk to non-scientists about his work. He didn't want to be bothered by questions from people who weren't working on his level. Krulwich contrasts this approach with that of Galileo, who certainly could have chosen to publish his work showing that the sun, rather than the Earth, was at the center of the solar system in scholarly Latin. Instead Galileo chose to put his ideas in a story about friends on a vacation, discussing theories. And he wrote it in Italian so that everyone could understand what he was saying. He wanted to reach a wide audience. He succeeded, and, of course, was placed under house arrest and called a heretic for his ideas.

So the other day, I read a piece by Patti Lather and I found it very difficult to comprehend. On the second reading, I started to get it and then got the feeling that after a few more readings and more work, it would start to become more clear to me. This work is full of dense terminology with complex meanings that have to be painstakingly unpacked before beginning to make sense. For Lather, the payoff is there. When I put in the work, I got a lot out of it. My colleagues are all big fans of Lather, and J explained that Lather uses that language to limit her audience. "If you want to understand what I have to say, you're going to have to work for it", she seems to be saying.

Lather is being like Newton and I think that this question of representation must be a common, if not universal, one for scholars. Do I want to be understood by the masses? Or by the elite few who have the intellect or the patience?

It's a question of accessibility. The question exists for artists too and I wonder if it is the same question. Sondheim, for instance, is difficult at first. He's not going for "easy" and he's not going for "common". But I love Sondheim's work and it's not because his work is difficult. Once you get your brain around it, there is beauty in the complexity of his use of language and music. I don't think his motivation is like Newton's. Or maybe it is. Maybe Krulwich is selling Newton short. Maybe Newton wasn't willing to compromise his vision to make it more easily comprehensible. Saying something using different words is saying something different.

This also reminds me of a classic Radio Lab episode that included a story about the public reaction to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. When it was first performed, the music was so difficult, radical, so unlike anything that had come before that there was a literal riot at its debut. One year later, it was met with accolades, and within a few decades it was so non-radical that it was included in the score of Disney's Fantasia. In that episode, Jad and Robert explain that our brains are incredibly good at finding patterns and that music is all about patterns. Given this, something that initially sounds shocking will always eventually sound normal. Look at the initial establishment reaction to jazz, to rock, to punk, to metal, to anything. Initially, people get upset, but eventually our brains tame the material and we "get" it.

Is the same true with non-musical ideas? If I read Einstein enough, will my brain work it out? If so, maybe we just don't spend enough time dwelling on scientific concepts for our brains to work them out.

I don't know, but I'd love to ask a scientist and a composer to have a conversation about it.